Bush Administration Fails Northwest Salmon Again

[Guest guest]

Columbia/Snake Rivers' Dam Operation Plan Rejects Best Science and

Calls for a Future That Allows Extinction of Key NW Salmon Stocks

 

September 9th, 2004

 

Contact Info: True, Earthjustice (206) 343-7340, x. 30

Bill Sedivy, Idaho Rivers United (208) 343-7481

Rob Masonis, American Rivers (206) 213-0330

Liz Hamilton, NW SIA (503) 631-8859

Glen Spain, PCFFA(541) 689-2000

 

 

Portland, OR-- The Bush administration's new draft Federal Salmon

Plan was denounced today by conservation groups and fishing

businesses as a major step backwards for salmon recovery in the

Columbia and Snake River Basin. The plan, which is supposed to chart

a course for the survival and recovery of Columbia and Snake River

salmon and steelhead, finds that dams no longer harm salmon based on

a questionable new interpretation of the Endangered Species Act. The

new plan, overseen by Bush administration political appointees, re-

interprets the ESA to weaken protections for salmon recovery in the

basin and calls for river flows and dam operations that meet

dictates of electrical generators and barge operations. However, the

plan fails the legal requirement of promoting survival and recovery

of salmon protected under the ESA. Rather than take concrete steps

to modify operation of the dams in ways that will allow the recovery

of protected salmon, the new plan reworks a tired, discredited

approach.

 

" Today's plan disregards sound science and the law. As a

consequence, it will hurt the people of the Northwest in the long

run. Such an extreme change of direction is not just bad news for

imperiled salmon; it is bad news for people too, " said Todd True,

Earthjustice. " This administration was asked to take several

reasonable steps forward toward long-term salmon recovery and

instead they have taken pretty much every giant step backwards they

could find. "

 

In May of last year, Federal District Court Judge James Redden

deemed the 2000 Biological Opinion illegal under the ESA and ordered

it replaced with a legal plan within the year. Today's draft plan is

an unfortunate indicator of where the government is headed. However,

the new plan seems to be even worse than the old plan.

 

" This plan has gone from bad to worse, " said John Kober, National

Wildlife Federation. " Instead of ensuring that we will see long-term

salmon recovery and abundance, it jeopardizes whether we will have

salmon at all. "

 

The main problem with dams is they block salmon migration up and

down river. Juvenile salmon die in the still-water reservoirs on the

upstream side of the dams due to the lack of downstream current

needed to move them to the ocean.

 

Salmon provide billions of dollars and thousands of jobs to people

living throughout the Northwest. The Bush administration is staking

out a position that allows not just salmon but this economy and

these jobs to go extinct.

 

In Idaho alone, the dams are keeping an estimated $240 million

dollars annually out of the economy.

 

Suppression of Science

 

Like the administration's recent draft salmon hatchery policy, this

new salmon plan ignores sound science. For example, the

administration has rejected the practice of considering long-term

population trends, which show salmon numbers in the Columbia and

Snake rivers down 94 percent from historic levels, in favor of

looking only at very recent years when exceptionally good ocean

conditions have helped increase salmon numbers. Although still above

the disastrously low levels of the 1990s, recent returns are far

below what scientists say is needed for the survival and recovery of

self-sustaining, harvestable salmon populations.

 

" The recent `upswing' in salmon returns is fading and was never as

good as it was made out to be, " said Pat Ford, executive director

Save Our Wild Salmon. " Basing the new plan on the trends that we've

seen for only the last few years will bring back the devastatingly

low wild salmon numbers that we saw in the 1990s. "

 

In addition, the new plan relies heavily on the judgments of Bush

administration political appointees instead of scientists.

Scientists say that each dam on the Columbia and Snake rivers kills

five to 15 percent of the salmon migrating through it. Unlike the

previous plan, however, the administration's new approach fails to

even consider the option of removing the four lower Snake River dams

and instead treats the dams as part of the " natural " river

environment. By ignoring the science about dams, the plan makes the

remarkable finding that the dams actually have a positive effect for

certain species of salmon.

 

" Twelve years after Snake River sockeye salmon were listed under the

Endangered Species Act, only twenty-two sockeye returned to Redfish

Lake in Idaho to spawn in 2004, " said Rob Masonis, regional director

of American Rivers. " And now the Bush administration says Snake

River sockeye are not in jeopardy. That does not pass the straight-

face test. What will it say next, that the future of the passenger

pigeon looks bright? "

 

 

Reinterpretation of the ESA

 

The Endangered Species Act calls not only for the survival of listed

salmon but also for their recovery to self-sustaining populations.

Two recent court decisions from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals,

which has legal authority in states that include the Columbia and

Snake Rivers, have clearly restated this basic requirement of the

Endangered Species Act.

 

However the new federal salmon plan assumes the only legal

requirement is to assure the bare survival of the salmon, not their

recovery. Current estimates project the possible extinction of some

Snake River salmon stocks as early as 2016, exposing taxpayers to

billions of dollars in compensation payments to Columbia River Basin

tribes with whcih the US has treaties.

 

In addition, the administration has redefined " survival " to mean

only that the dams must avoid " appreciably " increasing current rates

of salmon decline. According to the plan, as long as dams are not

increasing the speed at which salmon are going extinct, dam

operators are not required to stem the decline.

 

" We've been patient, we've taken our share of the burden, now it is

time for real leadership and real commitment for salmon, " said Glen

Spain, regional director Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's

Associations. " We want this administration and its agencies to stop

ignoring the fishing industry and the health of our rivers and give

us a plan that actually recovers salmon. "

 

 

 

 

 

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